PowerShell Script running Excel won't run on Windows Server 2008 R2

Question

I have a script that creates a report of a single example of each warning or error in the Windows Event log, for each server in a list of servers,with the number of times that error has occurred in the last week on each server. It creates this report in
Excel. I have this script running automated through Task Scheduler for one client on Windows 7 and it's working perfectly. I have another client that I am attempting to run this script automated on a server running Windows Server 2008 R2. I can manually run
the script and everything works, but if I try to schedule the script everything works except for the Excel PowerShell commands. I've have tried:
Created the Desktop folders for config\systemprofile in System32 and in SysWOW64.
Configured permissions in DCOM for Microsoft Excel Application.
Configured folder permissions for config\systemprofile.
Verified PowerShell is working.
Unchecked the option in the task to only run while logged on.
Does anyone have any idea why this is happening and how I can fix it? Thanks!
Sincerely,
Christopher Beard

Answer 1

You might have to launch the application once as the system account so that it can set up the Excel environment, I've had the same problem when  trying to update Excel files from an admin Powershell console using my admin account.  Use psexec with
a -s option to run it as system account locally while logged on to the target server:
psexec -s "c:\program files (x86)\microsoft office\office14\excel.exe"
Then you'll most likely be prompted to input initials - which is what I suspect is preventing your code from running properly.
There may be some other more elegant way to handle this, but you'd be better off asking that question in one of the forums devoted to Office products.
I hope this post has helped!